According to French political scientist Gilles Kepel, Ibn Baz was a "figurehead" whose "immense religious erudition and his reputation for intransigence" gave him prestige among the population of Saudi Arabia.
His endorsement of In Defence of Muslim Lands, principally written by Abdullah Azzam, was a powerful influence in the successful call for jihad against the Soviet Union.
Politics portal Ibn Baz was born in the city of Riyadh during the month of Dhu al-Hijjah in 1912[8] to a family with a reputation for their interest in Islam.
He also took lessons in the Qur'an, hadith, fiqh, and tafsir,[5] with the man who would precede him as the country's top religious official, Muhammad ibn Ibrahim Al ash-Sheikh.
[16] Ibn Bāz wrote more than sixty works over the course of his career on subjects including the hadith, tafsir, Islamic inheritance jurisprudence, Tawheed, fiqh, salat, zakat, dawah, Hajj and Umrah.
[28][36] In addition, there was controversy concerning the nature of the takfir (the act of declaring other Muslims to be kafir or unbelievers) which it was claimed Ibn Baz had pronounced.
[37] Ibn Baz wrote a letter to a magazine in 1966 responding to similar accusations: I only deemed it lawful to kill whoever claims that the sun is static (thābita la jāriya) and refuses to repent of this after clarification.
It is well established in the Din (religion of Islam) by way of decisive evidence and Ijma' (consensus) of scholars that whoever denies Allah, His Messenger or His Book is a Kafir (disbeliever), and their blood and wealth become violable.
[34][40] Western writers subsequently have drawn parallels between their perception of Ibn Baz and the trial of Galileo by the Catholic Church in the 16th century.
"[36] According to Lacey, Ibn Baz changed his mind about the earth's flatness after talking to Prince Sultan bin Salman Al Saud who had spent time in a space shuttle flight in 1985.
[33] Abd al-Wahhâb al-Turayrî calls those that attribute the flat earth view to Ibn Baz "rumour mongers".
"We must make careful checks whenever the kuffar [unbelievers] or faseqoon [immoral folk] tell us something: we cannot believe or disbelieve them until we get sufficient proof on which the Muslims can depend.
The Mabahith (secret police) of the Minister of Interior, Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, had identified Mohammed al-Qahtani and a number of the Ikhwan as troublemakers.
"[52] During the Persian Gulf War Ibn Bāz issued a fatwa allowing the deployment of non-Muslim troops on Saudi soil to defend the kingdom from the Iraqi army.
[53][55] In response to criticism, Ibn Baz condemned those who "whisper secretly in their meetings and record their poison over cassettes distributed to the people".
[53] The Jamaican radical cleric Abdullah el-Faisal ex-communicated (takfir) Ibn Baz, declaring him an apostate who died unrepentant.
[56] According to his obituary in The Independent, Ibn Baz held ultra-conservative views and strongly maintained the puritan and non-compromising traditions of Wahhabism.
[26] However, his political views were not strict enough for Osama bin Laden who condemned Ibn Baz for "his weakness and flexibility and the ease of influencing him with the various means which the interior ministry practises".
[58][59] Ibn Baz deemed it mandatory to destroy media that promoted Bin Laden's views, and declared that it was forbidden for anyone to co-operate with him.
He wrote: ...It is obligatory to destroy and annihilate these publications that have emanated from al-Faqeeh, or from al-Mas'aree, or from others of the callers of falsehood (bin Laden and those like him), and not to be lenient towards them.